NEW YORK-AN EMPIRE WITHIN A REPUBLIC
Photograph by Clifton Adams
IMMORTALIZED BY IRVING
Many of the early Dutch settlers rest beneath the ancient stones of Sleepy Hollow Churchyard
at Tarrytown. Along the highway that skirts it, Washington Irving laid the scenes of Ichabod
Crane's wild ride to escape the Headless Horseman.
skirting the St. Lawrence and Lakes Ontario
and Erie; peeping into every corner of the
Niagara front; exploring the Genesee area;
threading in and out among the interior
lakes, from little Conesus to big Cayuga,
and from beautiful Skaneateles to gorgeous
Otsego; reveling in the beauties of the val
leys of the Mohawk, the Chemung, the Sus
quehanna, and the Delaware, I think I know
something of Empire State scenery, and I
am ready to say of it, as Wallace Nutting
says of the Hudson, that here we find "civi
lization set in beauty."
AN ADVENTURE IN CONSERVATION
The magnificence of its park system, the
perfection of its parkways and boulevards,
the fine quality of its schools, the care it
gives its dependent population, and the
plans it projects for the future, all stamp it
as imperial alike in understanding, vision,
and purpose.
There is no finer chapter in the history
of any State than that which deals with the
deep concern New York shows in the con
servation of its scenic, historic, and recrea
tional resources.
This concern is a fitting companion piece
to the ever-growing care with which the
State educates its youth-a growth repre
sented by a tenfold increase in expenditures
for elementary and high-school education in
30 years.
From Lake Champlain to Niagara Falls,
from the western end of Chautauqua
County, on Lake Erie, to the eastern tip
of Suffolk, at Montauk Point, New York
has set up a series of 60 parks, of varying
type and area, to provide recreation centers,
to save scenic regions, and to safeguard his
toric shrines, and is developing them in a
manner that no great community has ever
surpassed and few have equaled.
We can probably get our best picture of
the spirit of the Empire State in the main
tenance of these parks from the words of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When
Governor, he wrote:
"On behalf of the people of the State of
New York, I extend an invitation to all
travelers to visit the Empire State, and to
use and enjoy the facilities for public recrea
tion that are to be found here, especially the
great system of public parks. The hand of
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